[PenultimateManStanding]

Sadly, I'm divorced, but my kids, 15 through 27 visit me every week for an enjoyable evening. My youngest, Rosie, is a star athlete. She was shortstop and clean-up batter on her high school softball team even though she was a 9th grader. She told the team that she wouldn't be back next year. They were a bunch of catty envious girls who gave her a hard time and she was hurt by it. But when she said she wasn't coming back next year they we all dismayed. So Rosie is going to focus her energy on Basketball and try to get her grades up. She loves Basketball. Anyway, the last time they were all over at my place, Rosie sequestered herself in the bedroom and drew bad vibe pictures. One was of a girl throwing away a heart. I didn't see that until the next day. But I could tell she was blue. After dinner, I went in and laid down next to her and we talked. I told her about J. David Dominelli and Ponzi schemes and how Roger Hedgecock used to be the mayor of San Diego but resigned for a conviction of shady dealings with Dominelli which were later overturned. She said she didn't know that but once Hedgecock had her come up and read the results of a raffle. Then I got around to telling her of the old bumper sticker that says, "The more I know people, the better I like my dog." She laughed at that.
I think it's the human condition to care about a few and damn the rest.

[Hagakure_Leofman]

[Quagmire]

.
PMS-
As you have shown, to let your kids know that there is a whole wide wonderful universe outside the catty halls of high school, and to do it with humor, is the best medicine a kid could have in getting through those hard years. You seem like a great dad!
Q.

[PenultimateManStanding]

I suppose it's boorish to brag about your kids. But Rosie is the youngest and I love her so. She plays basketball out on the streets with the black boys and beats them. They like her too. She had a fierce temper when she was little and once hit her brother with a hammer. She loved to hear the song "There was an old lady who swallowed a fly, I don't why she swallowed a fly, maybe she'll die." While her older brother and sister were watching cartoons, she'd come into my room and hang out and we would make up new lyrics. She just got her braces off and looks like Agent Scully of the X-Files.

[Hagakure_Leofman]

Look like she is lucky to have you has her dad.

There are quite a good good fathers on this forum. I'm only a new Dad myself. My darling daughter Maya is only 3 months old, and is just beginning to smile; she tries to talk which is very amusing

[PenultimateManStanding]

Maya, what a pretty name. btw, listen very carefully to the apparent gibberish, because it isn't.

[Hagakure_Leofman]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'M')aya, what a pretty name. btw, listen very carefully to the apparent gibberish, because it isn't.

[mercurygirl]

I thank God for all you good dads out there. My daughter has a great dad and she is his shadow at her age. She worships him. The father-daughter relationship is all-important. You're so lucky, Hagakure, to start such a wonderful relationship. I, being a worrying Mom, was more anxious than anything that first year, but dads have more perspective.
PMS, you're a good dad. It's obvious in your mentions of your kids. The fact that you're always there for them and treat them with respect goes a long way in their growth. Good work.

[WildRose]

This is a heartwarming thread.

PMS, I am sure your kids think the world of you. A good father is a great asset in a kid's life.

My husband is a very good dad also. I can really see the influence he has had on our three children. Our eldest, our daughter, is an interesting case in point - she is self-assured, won't take sh*t from anyone and absolutely loves her brothers. Our boys are learning so much from their dad, from the practical to the emotional.

We work hard at providing them all with support, and with teaching them to support one another and cheer each other on.

It's refreshing to hear from all of you about your love for your kids.

[WildRose]

I just had another thought, re: when we talk about our kids.

I had not seen a former co-worker of mine for about 20 years, and when I did finally see her I remembered her kids' names and some details about them, just because she had talked about them so often at coffee time!

[whatpeak]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('whatpeak', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

[Angry_Chimp]

When we lokk for the "perfect" human object we are looking for someone who allows us to express our will completely, without any frustration or false notes. We want an object that reflects a truly ideal image of ourselves.20 But no human object can do this; humans have wills and counterwills of their own, in a thousand ways they can move against us, their very appetites offend us.21 God's greatness and power is something that we can nourish ourselves in, without its being compromised in any way by the happenings of this world. No human partner can offer this assurance because the partner is real. However much we may idealize and idolize him, he inevitably reflects earthly decay and imperfection. And as he is our ideal measure of value, this imperfection falls back upon us. If your partner is your "All" then any shortcoming in him becomes a major threat to you.

If a woman loses her beauty, or shows that she doesn't have the strength and dependability that we once thought she did, or loses her intellectual sharpness, or falls short of our own peculiar needs in any of a thousand ways, then all the investment we have made in her is undermined. The shadow of imperfection falls over our lives, and with it—death and the defeat of cosmic heroism. "She lessens" = "I die." This is the reason for so much bitterness, shortness of temper and recrimination in our daily family lives. We get back a reflection from our loved objects that is less than the grandeur and perfection that we need to nourish ourselves. We feel diminished by their human shortcomings. Our interiors feel empty or anguished, our lives valueless, when we see the inevitable pettinesses of the world expressed through the human beings in it. For this reason, too, we often attack loved ones and try to bring them down to size. We see that our gods have clay feet, and so we must hack away at them in order to save ourselves, to deflate the unreal over-investment that we have made in them in order to secure our own apotheosis. In this sense, the deflation of the over-invested partner, parent, or friend is a creative act that is necessary to correct the lie that we have been living, to reaffirm our own inner freedom of growth that transcends the particular object and is not bound to it. But not everybody can do this because many of us need the lie in order to live. We may have no other God and we may prefer to deflate ourselves in order to keep the relationship, even though we glimpse the impossibility of it and the slavishness to which it reduces us.22 This is one direct explanation—as we shall see—of the phenomenon of depression.' [166-167].


"what is it that we want when we elevate the love partner to the position of God? We want redemption—nothing less. We want to be rid of our faults, of our feeling of nothingness. We want to be justified, to know that our creation has not been in vain. We turn to the love partner for the experience of the heroic, for perfect validation; we expect them to "make us good" through love.23 Needless to say, human partners can't do this. The lover does not dispense cosmic heroism; he cannot give absolution in his own name. The reason is that as a finite being he to is doomed, and we read that doom in his own fallibilities, in his very deterioration. Redemption can only come from outside the individual, from beyond, from our conceptualization of the ultimate source of things, the perfection of creation. It can only come, as Rank saw, when we lay down our individuality, give it up, admit our creatureliness and helplessness.24 What partner would ever permit us to do this, would bear us if we did? The partner needs us to be as God. On the other hand, what partner could ever want to give redemption—unless he was mad? Even the partner who plays God in the relationship cannot stand it for long, as at some level he knows that he does not possess the resources that the other needs and claims. He does not have perfect strength, perfect assurance, secure heroism. He cannot stand the burden of godhood, and so he must resent the slave. Besides, the uncomfortable realization must always be there: how can one be a genuine god if one's slave is so miserable and unworthy?"

'people need a "beyond," but they reach first for the nearest one; this gives them the fulfillment they need but at the same time limits and enslaves them. You can look at the whole problem of a human life in this way. You can ask the question: What kind of beyond does this person try to expand in; and how much individuation does he achieve it in? Most people play it safe: they choose the beyond of standard transference object like parents, the boss, or the leader; they accept the cultural definition of heroism and try to be a "good provider" or a "solid citizen. In this way they earn their species immortality as an agent of procreation, or a collective or cultural immortality as part of a social group of some kind. Most people live this way, and I am hardly implying that there is anything false or unheroic about the standard cultural solution to the problems of men. It represents both the truth and the tragedy of man's condition: the problem of the consecration of one's life, the meaning of it, the natural surrender to something larger—these driving needs that inevitably are resolved by what is nearest at hand.' [169-170].



"....something that women—like everyone else—are loathe to admit: their own natural inability to stand alone in freedom. This is why almost everyone consents to earn his immortality in the popular ways mapped out by societies everywhere, in the beyonds of others and not their own."

~Ernest Becker

[smallpoxgirl]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'I') think it's the human condition to care about a few and damn the rest.

[whatpeak]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('whatpeak', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('whatpeak', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('whatpeak', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'A')nd you, of tender years,
Can't know the fears that your elders grew by,
And so please help them with your youth,
They seek the truth before they can die.

Teach your parents well,
Their children's hell will slowly go by,
And feed them on your dreams
The one they picked, the one you'll know by.

Don't you ever ask them why, if they told you, you would cry,
So just look at them and sigh and know they love you.

[holmes]

A man after my own heart, PMS. Laying down with your daughter discussing PONZI schemes! Civilization is nothing more than one big fking PONZI scheme. Warn that girl. What a shithole she is going to inherit.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('holmes', 'A') man after my own heart, PMS. Laying down with your daughter discussing PONZI schemes! Civilization is nothing more than one big fking PONZI scheme. Warn that girl. What a shithole she is going to inherit.

[Narz]

I don't know if I've ever truly loved.

I imagine I will in a month though. *






























* I have a son due in one month.

[PenultimateManStanding]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Narz', 'I') don't know if I've ever truly loved.

I imagine I will in a month though. *


* I have a son due in one month.